The present invention relates to musical instruments and more particularly to guitar bodies with improved neck structure effective to facilitate the teaching of guitar and aid in the proper playing of same.
A guitar is played by strumming the portion of the guitar strings extending across the guitar base with one hand while simultaneously controlling along the neck of the guitar the vibration of the individual strings with the fingers of the other hand. In playing the guitar, the guitar player moves his hand up and down the guitar neck and uses his fingers to control string vibration in two respects. Firstly, the vibration of already vibrating strings may be selectively damped and stopped by placing a finger thereagainst. Secondly, the pitch of sounds generated by the strings are selectively varied by controlling the effective length of the strings by clamping the strings prior to vibration against the guitar neck at selected points along their lengths.
To play the guitar properly, the guitar player must first learn the proper hand position for his hand around the guitar neck, this being particularly important for a flamenco guitarist. Also, he must learn the correct placements of his hand along the guitar neck for playing different notes. With his hand in a correct placement along the guitar neck, a flamenco guitarist utilizes the point of his thumb contact against the back of the guitar neck as a pivot point or surface, his hand and the string controlling fingers thus pivoting about the pivot defined by the fixed placement of the thumb on the back of the guitar neck. Additionally, in controlling the effective length of the guitar strings, it is important that a guitar player be able to stop with precision his hand movement up and down the guitar neck and be able to quickly, surely and properly regrip the guitar neck at appropriately clamp the guitar strings against the guitar neck.
Heretofore, in teaching a guitarist to play, and particularly a flamenco guitarist, sight marks in the form of visually perceptible dots have been placed along the guitar neck to aid the learning guitarist the correct place of his hand along the guitar neck for playing different notes. These sight dots, however, have been mere visual guides and have not provided any positive aid to insure and discipline the guitarist hand positioning and proper placement.
Also heretofore, it has been known to associate channels or recesses with guitar neck structure for purposes distinctly different from those of the present invention. On example of such structure of different purpose is shown in Pelensky, U.S. Pat. No. 3,392,618 wherein a guitar having dual and triple neck areas is shown. In order to enable a guitar player's fingers to span all of the combined fingerboard area provided by its dual and triple neck areas, longitudinal extending thumb channels are associated with the dual and triple neck areas. Another example of such prior art structure of different purpose is shown in Veres, U.S. Pat. No. 3,481,238. In Veres, guitar neck structure is disclosed having traverse recesses defined in the top of the guitar neck or fretboard which diminish the obstruction met by the guitarist when fingering the guitar strings during playing. While the Pelensky and Veres patents may be of some general interest, the present invention, as pointed out hereinafter, does not relate to the dominant purposes of Pelensky and Veres of providing complete finger accessibility of guitar strings.